


25 Lives

by SociopathicArchangel



Series: 25 Lives [1]
Category: Don't Hug Me I'm Scared (Short Film)
Genre: 25 lives AU, F/M, concept au, i cannOT BELIEVE THIS, inspired by muffinworry and tongari, uploading here so that i don't have to move everything again if i have to move
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-24 22:54:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3787396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SociopathicArchangel/pseuds/SociopathicArchangel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The rules change, but there are outcomes that never change no matter how different the starting stroke of the pen is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	25 Lives

Harry knew that being reset all the time with no repercussions was too good to be true. Well, just being alive to be played with and torn apart to shreds itself was a bad thing (and how hilarious he thinks that is, that being alive itself is a bad thing, that just existing is wrong), but somehow, in the back of his head, he knew that there was something bigger, darker, colder looming in the background, just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

 

 

And it dropped, alright. It dropped, sending ripples and ripples of water and ice and fire and blood into the murky, messed up puddle that was his life. As if anything couldn’t have gotten any worse. He only wishes he could have seen it sooner.

 

  
It takes Robin to point out one, innocent, Thursday morning as he walks out of the bathroom, face still wet with water, that’s been thirty years since they’ve lived with Paige and Tony and they haven’t aged.

 

  
The statement floors him. He laughs, nervous, hoping to God with all his heart that it’s not true.

 

  
He checks himself in the mirror and digs out his photos from thirty years ago and finds that he looks exactly the same.

 

  
Then everything clicks in his head. How Manny was always teased in high school for being the shortest. How his friends at work always asked him how he doesn’t seem to age a day despite it being his fortieth birthday already. How Robin’s never looked any different, and he chalks it up to the fact that they see each other all the time, so whatever changes happen aren’t obvious.  
It’s not the familiarity. It’s the fact that their bodies haven’t moved on.

 

Robin’s got a theory, and he’s more than willing to listen. Anything for this to make sense. Anything for his life to return to normal. Starting with this. And then the monsters that terrorize his house living under the guise of ‘roommates’ and ‘friends’.

 

Tony resets time. They die almost every day. So Robin points out that whenever Tony brings them back to life, he takes away all the damage and the minutes their bodies experience when they were being mangled and flayed. That subtracts minutes, sometimes hours, sometimes days from their body’s age.

 

He thinks that may be the cause, the constant rewinding of their DNA that the change in their bodies have been lessened and lessened and lessened to the point where it’s almost impossible to tell whether they’ve aged or not.

 

Harry nearly breathes in relief. That means that they have aged, just painfully slowly, due to being reset all the time. Like a stupid game where the player never makes any progress.

 

Robin points out that Manny’s been going through a growth spurt ever since he moved out to go to college, and that’s possibly because he’s not being rewound all the time. It supports his theory, and Harry’s never thanked the heavens more that he has a genius for a roommate.

 

 

Of course, even that is broken apart, given a few more years.

 

All three of them, Harry, Robin and Manny stand in what appears to be a court. Harry almost cried when he saw Manny, taller now, baby fat shed, a little younger-looking for his age, but definitely grown. Unlike him and Robin, who were both now stuck in their late 20s. It’s not so bad, Manny’d joked. They look like brothers now.

 

 

Mortals aren’t supposed to be built like this. Harry knows that. And forget it all, he just wants to be normal now.

 

 

That’s not happening any time soon.

 

 

He’s never seen Paige and Tony bound before. Weaponless. Immobile. Helpless. Still, they look furious, glaring up at the entity that doesn’t really have a body, sitting at the Judge’s seat.

 

 

The image looks wispy in Harry’s vision, blurry at the edges, sometimes flickering to something so unbelievably bright that he has to close his eyes for a few seconds. He can’t see a face, but he can make out an outline. It’s humanoid (most of the time). But he is sure that when it speaks, it speaks in a thousand voices and a thousand languages that he has a hard time understanding it, grasping at familiar words to make sense of what is happening, since it involves him.

 

 

Hey, he might be eaten alive here, paranoia’s a damn blessing.

 

 

When the image gets too bright again, he looks down, tracing the sigils underneath Paige’s feet with his eyes. Tony’s on the other side of the room, restrained in cuffs just like her, symbols written in blue light around him.

 

 

Where were those things thirty years ago?

 

 

Then the Voices speak again and Harry stops breathing.

 

  
He looks up slowly, unable to believe his ears and though he can’t see any eyes, he’s sure that the Voices are looking at him in pity.

 

  
“Mortals are not supposed to be exposed to such high levels of their abilities,” they say, “It disrupts their physiology, no matter how perfect the result may seem. There are things that must not come into contact for an excessive amount of time.”

 

  
Too much of something is bad, his mom always said. He should have listened.

 

  
Robin looks down. Manny has a bitter smile on his face, like he’s been expecting this. He must have. He was a kid when this all started, of course he knew that there was always going to be something like this.

 

 

Then the Voices turn back to Paige and Tony.

 

  
“As for the both of you, the rules have changed,” they say and their image rises so that they appear to be standing, “Should you overstep your boundaries once again, you will be greeted with what you will surely deem unpleasant.”

 

  
Harry and his friends are given one last “Watch over them” before they’re sent back, all five of them.  
  


 

* * *

 

 

 

They never touch them after that. Robin accidentally brushes by Tony in the kitchen, but the man doesn’t glare at him, doesn’t slam his head onto the kitchen counter, doesn’t do anything.

 

  
It’s unnerving, it makes Harry hold his breath because this is another situation where there’s a steel-spiked shoe dangling over his head just waiting to crush him. But it never does.

 

  
Paige runs out of acrylic paint and she goes with Harry to get some since Tony’s too busy on a piece. She can’t reach the top shelf and turns to him and politely asks “Please.”

 

  
Harry wants to throw up.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It goes on like that for months. Manny’s even living with them now. He doesn’t want to have another roommate who might keep on looking at him and freaking out when a few years later he still looks exactly the same as when they first met (It’s not fair, it’s not fair, Manny got out, why does he have to be cursed along with them).

 

  
Paige says please. Tony doesn’t raise a hand against them. Manny smiles. Robin complains about his daily life. Harry’s nervous.

 

  
Then one day, Harry thinks that the peace is finally broken and the inevitable is finally here, just like he always thought it would. They were going to cross the red tape in front of them again, even if they were going to be punished. Harry was going to die and be reset again, and what was going to happen next if he was mutated further?

 

  
Was he going to become like them? Immortal monsters that had sick, twisted minds?

 

  
No, thank you.

 

  
He doesn’t die.

 

  
Paige does.

 

  
In fact, neither Tony and Paige attack them, they just tumble down the stairs, both clawing at each other’s throats. It’s a missed scene, as much as it makes him feel sick to his stomach, Paige and Tony kicking and punching and screaming at each other’s faces.

 

  
Paige claws Tony’s eyes out, stabs him with a palette knife and tears his neck open.

 

  
Tony bashes her head on the floor until it cracks and impales her on his sword.

 

  
Then the fight’s done. Paige stops squirming until she’s stiff and cold and Tony hides her body somewhere inconvenient for her to wake up in. He doesn’t give them a second glance.

 

  
He comes down for dinner like always, saying nothing and then goes back to his workshop.

 

Harry lets out a breath.

 

 

* * *

 

 

  
But the thing is, Paige doesn’t wake up.

 

 

* * *

 

  
Tony brings her body back into the house the next day, about ten hours, twenty three minutes and seven seconds since she died yesterday. She should have woken up hours ago. Instead, she’s still stiff, cold, and is even starting to go bad.

 

 

She’s rotting.

 

  
Harry puts a hand to his mouth and tries not to puke. Robin gapes, stares at her body and doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until his chest burns. Manny leans on the wall, eyes wide.

 

  
Tony puts her in her room, cleans the place, makes the bed and sits by her side until evening.

 

  
She doesn’t wake up.

 

  
She’s rotting.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

They bury her the next day. Robin sets up a gravestone.

 

  
Tony sits there, waiting.

 

 

* * *

 

 

  
He stays there for a week, wet from dew and rain. Harry thinks he might be hungry, but the mix of anger and frustration on his face makes the red head stay away.

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
A week later, that look of anger and frustration is replaced with a dull, blank expression and shark eyes.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

He still can’t believe that Paige died. Really died. Died thinking she was going to come back and tear Tony a new one. Died thinking she was going to wake up and finish her painting. Died thinking she was indestructible.

 

  
Tony did too.

 

  
Harry knows that it’s Tony who’s having the hardest time believing it’s all real out of all of them.

 

  
He eats again, he’s not always by Paige’s grave, but he’s not working anymore. He just sits by the porch and stares up the sky when it’s not too bright.

 

  
The day he lies down on the lawn letting the rain pelt his face, eyes closed, Harry knows that he’s lost to them.

 

  
Nobody can blame him for feeling sorry.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Tony sleeps in Paige’s room now. Nobody comments on it and nobody questions it.

 

  
He still doesn’t talk a lot to them, but he doesn’t yell or explode at them either. He stumbles to the kitchen and when he bumps into someone, he just grunts. When he almost turns on the coffeemaker without any beans inside and Manny points it out, he just looks at the younger male, looks back to the coffee pot and makes a noise at the back of his throat. Manny takes over and he doesn’t say anything.

 

  
Robin cleans his room. He never comes inside it anymore and it’s gathering dust, so he cleans it, careful to not break or move anything. He covers the pieces and the work table so they don’t accumulate any more grime and returns to clean the next day.

 

 

He tells Tony the state of his workshop at breakfast one day and is rewarded with a small, hoarse, “So?”

 

  
Manny unceremoniously walks out the dining room and they hear the bathroom door upstairs close with a slam.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

None of them know why, but when Harry ‘s company has a party and he’s allowed to bring friends, Tony tags along.

 

  
Harry thinks he might be getting bored (bored is good, bored is better than grief) and lets him. He even dresses up. Not as much as before when Paige (and here he stops). He still can’t put on a tie right, but he’s decked out in his old suit nonetheless. Harry thinks it’s progress, and he smiles to himself.

 

  
(There’s a part of him that snickers, jeering at him that wasn’t it hilarious that he’s worried for the man that once tore him to pieces and put him back together again, cursing him in the process.)

 

  
The party goes fine. Manny, not a boy but a dashing stuck-in-time young man with unruly blue hair and kind eyes that makes girls gravitate towards him, gets a lot of dances. Harry can tell it’s awkward, but he charms them and is careful not to press any wrong buttons.

 

 

Robin’s never been one to socialize and turns down everyone who offers him, he chooses to stay at the sides. Tony’s with him. He raises a lot of eyebrows, with his unreadable expression and impressive clean up, plenty of ladies saunter over to him (Too bad none of them are Paige, that part of Harry thinks again and he shoves it out violently.), but he shakes his head. Sometimes he gives them a (sad) smile. He never says a word.

 

 

Then the party ends and Robin breathes out in relief that they can finally go home. Manny relaxes. Harry keeps his eyes on Tony.

 

 

The man’s eyes have gone back to being blank again. Dead. He’s always hated sharks.

 

  
Then Tony’s head snaps up and he looks across the street. Harry follows his line of vision, eyes wide.

 

  
There’s a girl, wrapped up in a long, dark coat (just like his, Harry thinks), walking down the street, wrapping her scarf tighter around her neck, trying to fight against the cold December chill.

 

  
It hits Harry hard.

 

  
Pale, pale skin. Soft curls flowing down her back and framing her face, and with the fairy lights blinking red, blue, green and yellow around them, her light hair reflects a mess of colors.

 

  
Harry gulps.

 

 

No, he wants to say, no Tony, that’s not her. Can’t you see? She’s blonde, she’s pale, she’s shorter. She’s not Paige.

 

  
But he doesn’t get a word out when Tony suddenly bolts across the street.

 

  
“Tony!” Manny yells, running after him. Robin follows, equally frantic.

 

 

He doesn’t listen. Harry chases after his friends, chest clenching when he hears Tony’s loud (strangled, wounded, desperate) cry of, “Paige!”

 

  
Then Robin skids to a stop and grabs Manny, pulling him backwards, extending an arm to block Harry from advancing.

 

  
They all stare in shock as the world is broken by a loud blast of a horn and a semi-truck rams into Tony.

 

  
Robin stumbles back, Harry goes bug-eyed, Manny screams.

 

 

The semi-truck doesn’t stop, running over Tony’s battered and mangled body. Robin runs after it, shouting at the top of his lungs, cursing, waving his arms, eyes memorizing the plate number that’s getting smaller and smaller as the truck retreats.

 

  
Manny shakily goes to Tony’s side, muttering “Oh god, oh god oh god oh god,” and sweating madly.

 

  
Harry stays rooted to where he stands. His chest burns. His hands shake. His knees buckle from under him and he falls to the ground, staring at where Tony lies, limbs bent at odd angles, twitching and staring up at the night sky.

 

 

Manny is crying. Out of shock, maybe. Robin’s still screaming himself hoarse.

 

  
And there’s blood. So much blood, staining the asphalt and painting it deep red with flecks of gold and Harry’s delirious mind thinks that Tony’s harboring a galaxy inside of him, a deep blackish-red galaxy with golden stars and constellations with a heart that beats PaigePaigePaige every second, every minute.

 

 

And now that heart’s going to stop, Harry knows it.

 

  
He thinks about just how far the extent of that “So?” is and heaves his insides out.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The house feels empty.

 

  
He should be happy. Actually, should he be happy? For sure, they’ve broken them until there was nothing left to break and then put them back together to do it all over again, but at the eleventh hour, Tony didn’t do anything. Hell, they learned that the overstepping was actually ‘killing each other’ and not so much ‘torturing the mortals’, even though it probably was, but he hadn’t taken out his anger on them. (He was tired, his brain says, but he tells it to shut up.)

 

  
It’s Robin who’s on the verge of looking so dead now and Harry panics, memory flicking back to broken limbs and blood galaxies, but then Robin drinks his entire mug of coffee in one gulp and his face contorts in pain. Harry thinks that as long as he feels, (anything other than absolute nothingness) he’ll be fine.

 

  
Manny’s a wreck. His hands are always shaking and whenever he hears car horns, he flinches.

 

  
Harry swallows and mutters apologies under his breath, thinking that if he could have shouted sooner, told him that it wasn’t Paige, he would still be alive.

 

 

They weren’t friends, but Harry’s not cruel. Harry’s not a monster. And killing someone who is broken isn’t something he ever wants to do.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

They move out of the house a decade after. The neighbors, at least the ones who were around about thirty, twenty years ago, have noticed that they don’t have a single grey hair and still look like they’re young professionals although Harry’s fifty and Manny’s thirty. Manny still looks twenty two, and that’ll pass off as ‘age being kind to him’, but two forty-to-fifty-plus year olds who look twenty seven is going to raise eyebrows.

 

  
Robin changes their legal names and all of their documents. They move to London as new graduates.

 

 

It’s good. Forgetting about everything and having a new start at life. Granted, about twenty more years from now, they’ll have to move and change identities again, but for now, it’s good. He can pretend it’s all fine, that he is indeed a new graduate, that he’s a young man looking to find his way in the world though he’s already outlived his parents. That there’s not going to be several new starts at life. The reset has only stopped being physical.

 

 

They continue their charade, they’re good at it, even. Thirteen years into their jobs and everybody thinks they’re just young for their age. He’s fricking sixty, he wants to say, but then they’d just laugh it off.

 

 

His boss asks him to show a bunch of new hires the ropes and he gladly accepts the order, having done it so many times now.

 

 

He doesn’t expect to see the familiar green eyes and pastel rainbow hair in one of the neophytes.

 

 

Harry resists the urge to pull out his hair, grab her by the shoulders and scream “Where were you twenty three years ago?” at her face. Did she take an extended nap or was she just screwing around with Tony to the point where the man died?

 

 

But Harry doesn’t, because somehow, he knows that it’s her (it’s not a coincidence, he’s lived long enough and been through enough to know that) but it’s also…not her. Not her-her, anyway, if that makes any sense.

 

 

For starters, she looks younger. An actual ‘new graduate looking for a place in the world’ younger. Her skin’s not paper white, just pale. He can see the lifeblood underneath those veins, the dark lines from studying too much and the nervousness behind her eyes. He wants to laugh, scream and cry. Maybe lift her up in the air and tell her about how much she’s messed everything up, and there’s a part of his brain that suggests he push her around in her new job. It’s his turn this time.

 

 

But he also doesn’t. He’s said to himself before, he’s not cruel.

 

 

Just because Paige isn’t really Paige anymore and is in a cheap ladies’ suit, pencil skirt, flats and has her hair done in a ponytail, looking up at him like he’s going to kick her out of the building anytime now didn’t mean he was going to start being mean to her.

 

 

So he shows them the ropes and then leaves to his work after that.

 

 

Their paths still cross, although he should probably expect it. She asks him for help, that all too familiar “Please?” from a lifetime ago, but she means it now. She sketches during her free time and Harry can drag her over to their house and show her all of her artworks they’ve kept from before.

 

 

When he learns that her name is still Paige, he gets home and laughs himself stupid until Robin finds him on the floor and panics, thinking he’s having a heart attack.

 

 

She doesn’t remember anything, of course, but things come up sometimes. Vague memories, déjà vu, calling him ‘Harry’ when he doesn’t introduce himself and wondering how she knows it. He tells her that maybe it was just a lucky guess and she tilts her head to the side, shrugs and continues her work. She’s got a high grade in chemistry (she went to high school, he thinks and bites down the laughter that’s threatening to burst out his throat and land him in the loony bin). She has a lot of paintings at home. She’s got a last name this time.

 

 

He tells all of this to Robin and Manny and they all find it hilarious as well, if a bit sad. The rules have been chucked out the window and it’s affecting all of them. Even in a new life that’s not really one, it’s still the five of them. Even if Tony’s dead, it’s still the five of them.

 

 

When Manny and Robin pick him up from work and he’s talking with Paige, her eyes light up at the sight of them in a recognition she can’t place. She knows their names by instinct, knows that somehow, Robin used to work in IT and that Manny was an awkward kid in school. (Knows their screams, knows their veins, knows them literally inside out, knows Robin’s dreams - )

 

 

They become awkward friends, because Harry can’t seem to push her away, only looking at her with sad eyes. She’s not exactly warm and bubbly, she’s got a temper, a sassy mouth and an ego the size of the Chrysler building, but she’s tolerable.

 

 

When she overhears talking about someone called Tony, she stiffens, tilts her head and her expression becomes clouded with confusion. That flickers to rage, her hands clench into fists, but then she’s crying and she doesn’t even notice it.

 

 

“Paige?” It won’t ever be weird being worried about a little sister figure that had once disemboweled him decades ago.

 

 

“Yeah?” she looks up and notices that her voice is nasally and that there’s tears streaming down her face.

 

 

Robin’s eyebrows shoot up when he sees it and he shares a look with Manny, “You okay?”

 

 

She wipes away the moisture and stares at her wet fingers, “Y-yeah. M’fine.”

 

 

Three days later, a guy with dark blue skin and hair that stuck up in directions Robin didn’t even know, frosted with gold, is hired at Robin’s place.

 

  
His name is Tony.

 

  
Harry thinks he might die of asphyxiation.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

It goes on like that for centuries. It lasts for a long, long while. Harry and his friends watch as not-so-Paige and not-so-Tony end up meeting (how, they have no idea, but one day, Paige is going to work exchanging insults with a taller guy whom Harry has definitely seen before while he’s opening the door of her car to let her out, and Harry realizes that this is Robin’s Tony), fight as always (not so brutal this time) and acquaint themselves with the trio.

 

  
Harry doesn’t go so far as calling them friends. This Tony is annoying. He’s shorter than Harry because of his age, which is weird as hell, and Harry wants to kick him off his high horse. Both Tony and Paige are still violent, but they don’t go as far as killing each other, since they were both raised (yet another thing he’ll make a face at) with the teaching that murder was bad.

 

 

Manny thinks they’ll finally get married and fly off to another country and the three of them will finally, finally, be at peace.  
Then Tony dies again.

 

  
Cancer.

 

  
Paige is the one who goes through the motions that the three have seen before. Doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep, spends most of her time with a thousand-yard stare into nothing, drops out of work until she’s eating air. Harry tries to take care of her (not this time, he thinks, I won’t let one of them die of grief when I can save them this time), feeds her, cleans her house, looks after her.

 

  
She dies of illness.

 

 

A few more years and then they move on to another place again. A new life, a new name, a new job.

 

  
It’s not surprising when Harry’s ninety three, still looking twenty seven, when he bumps into another not-really-Paige. He’s the one who keeps on finding her somehow, and he has no idea why.

 

  
They still stick. He just wants to be away from her but they always end up crossing paths to the point where she accuses him of stalking her (“Hell no!”), and then she meets Robin and Manny and suddenly, they’re sharing living space again.

 

  
And then Robin finds the new version of Tony and viola, new roommate.

 

  
At least they’re sufferable when they’re mortal, shorter and younger.

 

 

Robin relishes in the fact that he could always press a hand to Paige’s forehead to stop her from hitting him in the face, since she’s the one who has to look up to him this time.

 

  
They never get a good ending. It’s still Tony who dies first this time, saving Paige from drowning when a typhoon hits their place and floods the area no matter how high they’ve tried to get. Paige goes near catatonic. Then it’s her turn.

 

  
The boys move on.

 

  
And it’s another story.

 

* * *

 

 

 

Harry is two hundred and seventy three when they meet the fourth Paige and Tony versions, and he can’t believe it has come to this.

 

  
Paige is a nine-year-old who’s currently clinging to his pant leg because she’s lost and she needs help in finding her parents. Harry is sorry for whoever had the misfortune to have her landed in their home.  
Tony is ten and he’s pestering Manny about what time it is, since his mom’s told him to wait by the bench that morning and it’s already afternoon but she’s still not back yet.

 

  
It turns out both of them were abandoned (no surprise, they were both probably pains in the ass), and the boys have no choice but to take them home while they contact the police. Of course, the two end up not wanting to leave, (“Robin gives me as much ice cream as I want!” “Robin, how many times do I have to tell you Paige is dangerous when she’s sugar high?!” “She’s nine and she’s human, Harry.”) so now they’re raising two kids who were once monsters.

 

 

Harry gets home drunk one time and Paige is waiting for him in the living room. She nags at him, telling him that he’s home late, supper is already cold and why is he drunk? He flops face first into the sofa and mumbles that in the two hundred and seventy three years he’s been alive, she was the most annoying kid he’s ever met.

 

 

Her eyes widen and she drowns out the second part of his sentence, “Really?” she asks, “You’re two hundred seventy three?”  
He nods and turns over so that he’s facing the couch instead.

 

  
“You don’t look old,” she says, walking over to the arm rest where his head is placed.

 

  
“S’cause I have shitty luck and got cursed.”

 

  
“Whaddaya mean?”

 

 

“I mean,” he turns over to face her, “That something happened to me n’now I don’t grow old. Don’t think I can die either, but we haven’t tested tha’ yet.”

 

  
“Cool. How about Robin and Manny?”

 

  
“Oh, they’ve hell for luck too.”

 

 

“How old’s Robin?”

 

  
“Two fifty? Two sixty? I dunno.”

 

 

She giggles, “No wonder he’s like an old man.”

 

  
“I heard that, young lady,” Robin enters the room at that moment and lifts her off the ground with her protesting, “It’s way past your bed time and you shouldn’t hang out with drunk people.”

 

  
“Why not?”

 

  
“Because then you’ll stink like piss,” he says. Paige punches his shoulder and he drops her. She lands on her behind and kicks his leg, “Jerk!”

 

  
“Brat,” he says then motions towards the stairs, “Get to bed.”

 

 

Read me a story!” she calls, already racing up the steps.

 

  
“Only if you brush your teeth, ‘cause you smell like a sewer!”

 

  
Harry grunts and looks up at him, “You’re getting comfortable with them.”

 

  
“Not every day you get to have a kid version of those two running around and ruining your life in a more fun way than they did the first time.”

 

  
Harry snorts, “Are you actually enjoying this?”

 

  
“Hey, we’re pseudo immortals who have to keep moving or we’ll raise suspicion. I’m the making the best out of what we have.”

 

  
Harry hopes like hell that these versions are going to have that happy ending they’ve all been waiting for.

 

* * *

 

 

 

Harry’s ‘I can’t believe it’s come to this’ mindset is shattered when in several more lifetimes, Paige is a cat and Tony is a dog.

 

  
Manny laughs for centuries. Robin’s busting a lung.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

There’s so many of them that it’s hard to keep count over the years, even harder than their own age. But they’re always the same and different at the same time. Always Paige, always Tony, always meeting the three of them, always dying, always going through grief and sorrow that they’ve been through before, always following the other to the grave.

 

  
Harry sometimes pleads that the one left behind doesn’t have to go through the process of having a piece of their heart and soul ripped away from them again. It’s always in vain.

 

 

In one lifetime, Paige swallowed all the sleeping pills. In one lifetime, Tony drank himself to death. In one lifetime, someone put the barrel of the gun in their mouth and pulled the trigger.

 

  
Manny thinks it’s a cruel punishment. It has to stop. Set the rules back in place if you have to. But the rules have long disintegrated into nothing.

 

  
In one lifetime, Tony is the hunter and Paige is the hunted. He kills her without mercy. In one lifetime, Tony doesn’t exist and Paige wonders why her chest feels so heavy and why there’s always something missing. In one lifetime, they’re soldiers on either side of the chessboard. In one lifetime, they bump into each other and never know their names, dying on their deathbeds feeling like they missed the world. In one lifetime, they’re not human, but they don’t live forever either.

 

  
Harry, Robin and Manny watch. Watch as five hundred turns to a thousand and a thousand to three and three to five, and still they don’t wrinkle, they don’t shrivel, they go against everything the first, the real, the original Tony told them and stay young. They don’t catch sickness and their bones don’t break when they fall from stories off the ground.

 

  
Meanwhile, Paige and Tony gravitate around each other only for the other to be ripped apart violently and the one left behind is to blunder blind, until they give up or they follow to be spun around the bobbin again.

 

  
In one lifetime, Robin stands up and gets tired of everything. He thinks that if the both of them manage to survive through this and get their happy ending, then it’ll stop and the rules will be set back in place. Manny stands along with him.

 

  
They never have a problem with having both of them cross paths, because the universe has decided that the messy tapestry has been torn to shreds but there’s always that one knot that’s never going to get broken.

 

  
So they watch as five thousand turn to six and six to ten and ten to infinity.

 

  
And through hundreds of lifetimes, the rules are meaningless, but there’s always one story that stays the same despite how different the starting stroke of the pen is.


End file.
